Wexus (Water-Energy-Nexus) Blog. Insights for driving impact and efficiency with IoT technology

Customer Case Study: Major Water Utility Drives Reporting and Efficiency Goals with Wexus Software

Written by Wexus | Dec 22, 2018

“We have to recreate and innovate in order to be sustainable. The old ways that once worked do not work today. With Wexus we are able to select the changes that makes the difference for us which sets up the District for success on improving efficiency, water and costs savings.

- Gene Kilgore, General Manager

Background

Corcoran Irrigation District (CID) has been a supplier of agricultural irrigation water and service in California’s Central San Joaquin Valley since 1919. CID covers about 49,000 acres which includes active agriculture, rural residences, and reservoirs. Irrigation facilities include approximately 200 miles of canals and 2 miles of pipeline. CID operates 3 reservoirs with a total capacity of 8,000 acre feet and owns and operates a combined total of 89 wells and pump stations with surface water supply from the Kings and Kaweah River.

Project

CID was spending in excess of $530,000 per month on utility bills across 89 wells and pump stations in their district, spanning over 49,000 acres. They needed to reduce electricity costs and to track irrigation pump efficiency and water consumption in real time. The District had performed pump tests and wanted to improve efficiency and water production but had no simple way to monitor performance on an ongoing basis. Unfortunately, CID only had a handful of flow meters at a few wells and was short-staffed for tracking maintenance issues.

The Wexus team solved these problems by deploying IoT software and hardware to submeter energy and water consumption and costs in real-time for all pumps across the entire district. This allowed CID’s team to manage their entire portfolio of assets in one place, to see how energy efficiency impacted their real cost of water delivery, and to make more informed decisions around equipment maintenance and operational reporting.

To date, Wexus software has identified almost 8% of monthly electric costs and efficiency gains, resulting in estimated cost savings of over $35,500 per month.

Interested in hearing more about how Wexus software can drive reporting and efficiency gains for your irrigation district or water utility? Email our Energy Engineers at ops@wexusapp.com or click here to get a free software demo